Brief remarks on the etymology of wine

[Saina Nieminen]

I just realized that the etymology of our beloved beverage is quite a bit more complicated than I had originally thought. This might all be old news for you - apologies if it is. But while teaching myself Epigraphic Old South Arabic I came across a word in one inscription that made me think again and research the etymology a bit further.

The etymology that one reads in every dictionary (that bothers to include such information), is that it originates in a proto-Indo-European root (the reconstructions of this will of course vary because of the unsolved problem of laryngeals in pIE, but is often seen as *wih₁nom) (the asterisk means a reconstructed form), which in turn gave rise to the variety we see in IE languages past and present: Greek (w)oin-, Latin vin-, Hittite wian-, Old English wīn, etc. almost ad. inf.

But what I had not seen mentioned before is that at least two other unrelated language groups have a root that can be traced back to a common ancestor root that has the same meaning (ie wine [ha ha]).

The South Caucasian or Kartvelian languages have a root, reconstructed as *ghwin-, that also means wine. That Georgian (ghvino), Mingrelian, Laz and Svan have a reconstructible root for the word wine, means that it is a natural word in the language group and not a loan word (at least not in the time that historical linguistics can reach back to). Two language groups having similar sounding words for similar meanings is not at all uncommon, so this could just be a coincidence.

Three could also be a coincidence; and Semitic languages also have a root with the same meaning and very similar sound. In Neo-Babylonian we have the word īn- (the semi-vowels "w" and "y" disappeared in later forms of Akkadian) which means "wine". In Arabic alongside the more common nabīdh and khumra we have wayn which means "wine". In Epigraphic Old South Arabic (Sabean dialect) we have the tri-consonantal root WYN which we can't vocalize with any certainty but which Joan C. Biella in her dictionary translates as "wine" (though was wine grown in the hills of what is now Yemen back then?). In Hebrew we have yayin, meaning "wine", which might not seem all that similar on first sight, but that is due to a peculiarity of Hebrew: words beginning with an etymological "w" for some reason came to start with the other semi-vowel "y" (except for the word "and" which is wa in all Semitic languages, including Hebrew).

Three language groups with similar sounding words for similar meaning words could simply be a coincidence. But there seem to be quite a few such words in the eastern Mediterranean area: the number "seven" is maybe the most famous one (shvid- in Georgian, sebet- in Akkadian, sept- in Latin). "Bull" is another with taur- both the Latin and Greek root, and in Arabic it is thawr-. With these and many more words, it seems that there might have been contact between these language groups before the time of the reconstructible proto-language. It's an exciting thought experiment but a completely unscientific one, and these pan-Mediterranenanisms might be explained by sheer coincidence too.

 

[Oswaldo Costa]

originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
But while teaching myself Epigraphic Old South Arabic...

I resent that. Makes me feel like you're more curious about the world than I am.

 

[kirk wallace]

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:

originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
But while teaching myself Epigraphic Old South Arabic...

I resent that. Makes me feel like you're more curious about the world than I am.

Not I. I am almost happy with how I have learned to tie my shoes.

 

[Jeff Grossman]

originally posted by kirk wallace:
Not I. I am almost happy with how I have learned to tie my shoes.

Pinkies up?

 

[kirk wallace]

originally posted by Jeff Grossman:

originally posted by kirk wallace:
Not I. I am almost happy with how I have learned to tie my shoes.

Pinkies up?

Have never actually noticed. Is that what I've been missing?

 

[MLipton]

originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
Brief remarks on the etymology of wine

Thanks for the analysis, Otto. One language I didn't see in your analysis, though, is Farsi. Since current thought has wine production beginning (perhaps spontaneously) on the shores of the Black Sea back in the 5-6th millenium BCE, one might suppose that the word for wine diffused outward, along with v. vinifera and the technology for making wine, from there to the E Mediterranean and Arabian peninsula. In fact, I have read some speculation that civilization (i.e. agrarian lifestyle) arose principally to make wine and beer, so the word for wine may have moved with civilization itself. In fact, perhaps the Achaeans tell us of this movement with stories about the arrival of Dionysus from the East, presumably from the area of the S Caucasus.

Mark Lipton

 

[Doug Padgett]

originally posted by MLipton:

originally posted by Otto Nieminen:
Brief remarks on the etymology of wine

Thanks for the analysis, Otto. One language I didn't see in your analysis, though, is Farsi. Since current thought has wine production beginning (perhaps spontaneously) on the shores of the Black Sea back in the 5-6th millenium BCE, one might suppose that the word for wine diffused outward, along with v. vinifera and the technology for making wine, from there to the E Mediterranean and Arabian peninsula. In fact, I have read some speculation that civilization (i.e. agrarian lifestyle) arose principally to make wine and beer, so the word for wine may have moved with civilization itself. In fact, perhaps the Achaeans tell us of this movement with stories about the arrival of Dionysus from the East, presumably from the area of the S Caucasus.

Mark Lipton

Apparently, and I'm no linguist, wine is a wanderwort.

 

[Saina Nieminen]

originally posted by MLipton:
One language I didn't see in your analysis, though, is Farsi.

Yes, that's because the Farsi word for wine sharb is an Arabic loan. Also, I haven't seen a word for wine in Avestan or in Farsi's direct predecessors, Old Persian and Pahlavi. Linguistically, these languages don't bring anything at all to the discussion.

Since current thought has wine production beginning (perhaps spontaneously) on the shores of the Black Sea back in the 5-6th millenium BCE, one might suppose that the word for wine diffused outward, along with v. vinifera and the technology for making wine, from there to the E Mediterranean and Arabian peninsula.

It would indeed be fascinating to know more, but since nothing has survived in the language record, everything is speculation.

In fact, I have read some speculation that civilization (i.e. agrarian lifestyle) arose principally to make wine and beer, so the word for wine may have moved with civilization itself. In fact, perhaps the Achaeans tell us of this movement with stories about the arrival of Dionysus from the East, presumably from the area of the S Caucasus.

Was it is Patrick McGovern who is saying this? He has done some interesting work on wine's history from an archaeological point of view. But he does have some strange ideas about the languages.

No proper reason has ever been given for agriculture's appearance, but I find most satisfying the idea that humans had to settle down to agriculture due to climate change - a change to a drier climate in the fertile crescent. Hans-Jrg Nissen has a chapter about the appearance of agriculture in his book The Early History of the Near East 9000-2000 BC. Nissen is a very good, no nonsense type of archaeologist (those are sadly rare...). You won't find any fanciful interpretations from meager data.

 

[Jonathan Loesberg]

The usual explanation for the development of agriculture given by my colleagues in Anthropology recently is that when the population of certain groups exceeded the ability of hunter gatherers to support it, they turned to agriculture (of which gathering would already have given them experience). The older theory reversed cause and effect, positing that population could only grow when human beings moved to agriculture, thus raising the problem of what motivated the move. As I understand the current thinking, field studies of remaining hunter gatherer groups (who of course know of the existence of agriculture and its benefits) show them extremely reluctant to move from their current practices, which entail a couple of days of hunting a week and then a lot of eating and boasting at least on the part of the males, to a practice which, while it produces much more food, also entails getting up early and working all day. This theory, I assure you, is held by my colleagues seriously--and it makes sense to me.